THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 29, 2016
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tracts.Those areas are distinguished by
the sheer absence of economic life: few
hardware stores, pharmacies, and restau-
rants, and virtually no banks.
For more than twenty years, Rob-
ert Sampson, a Harvard sociologist,
and a team of researchers have con-
ducted a study of human development
in Chicago neighborhoods. "The in-
carceration rate in the highest-ranked
black community in Chicago is forty
times higher than the incarceration rate
in the highest-ranked white commu-
nity," he said. "You can't even compare
them." Sampson's team visited many
cities---including New York, Baltimore,
and New Orleans---before choosing
Chicago. "If you want to trace across
multiple dimensions the legacies of in-
equality, Chicago is a microcosm of all
the things that are bearing down on
cities,"Sampson said. His Chicago por-
trait, "Great American City," challenges
the argument that globalization and
technology have flattened boundaries
and details how the distance of a few
blocks still determines the basic prob-
abilities in life---the chances of hear-
ing a tip on a job prospect, or receiv-
ing a first-time loan, or being hit by
crossfire. Last year, four hundred and
sixty-eight people were killed in Chi-
cago, a higher total than in any other
American city, and up thirteen per cent
from the previous year. Most were killed
in black neighborhoods, where homi-
cide rates are thirteen times higher, on
average, than in better-o white areas.
"If you don't expect to live past
twenty-two, then why would you delay
gratification for something in the fu-
ture that may never come?" Sampson
said. "That, in turn, influences every
big decision." As early as preschool,
the threat or the experience of vio-
lence can induce stress that distorts
academic performance. The extent to
which growing up in a poor black
neighborhood in Chicago hampered
verbal development was found to be
the equivalent of "missing one year of
schooling." Nearly forty-seven per cent
of all black men in Chicago between
the ages of twenty and twenty-four
are neither in school nor working---
the highest percentage of any big city.
(Nationwide, the figure is thirty-two
per cent.)
Natalie Moore, a reporter for the radio
station WBEZ and the author of "The
South Side," a forthcoming book on race
and inequity, grew up in Chatham, a
historic black neighborhood, and works
out of a storefront bureau on Seventy-
fifth Street. When I dropped by, she
was finishing a piece inspired by the
Laquan McDonald case. His life was
short and cruel: His mother, who was
fourteen when she became pregnant,
had a boyfriend who abused him. By
the time he was five, McDonald was
punching himself in the face at day care.
Moore said,"He was a runaway from
the Department of Children and Fam-
ily Services," who had been arrested re-
peatedly for drugs. On the night of his
final encounter with the police, on Pu-
laski Road, he had PCP in his system.
Moore has come to see the current cri-
sis in Chicago as tied to a void in black
leadership. In , Harold Washing-
ton, who came from the South Side, be-
came Chicago's first black mayor. This
was a revolutionary development in
urban America, marrying the civil-rights
agenda with electoral politics, and it in-
spired Obama to move to Chicago (hop-
ing, someday, to succeed Washington).
But Washington died at his desk, in
, and soon Daley's son Richard M.
Daley moved into City Hall, where he
stayed for twenty-two years. "Black pol-
itics died when Harold Washington
died," Moore said.
"Chicago is kind of like Rome, the
city-state," she went on. " The transition
from King Richard to Emperor Eman-
uel has not been an easy one, and I think
people have felt more empowered to do
something now," to demand more from
City Hall. The activists, not the politi-
cians, are ascendant, she said. "I don't
think anyone really feels like elected lead-
ership has moved the Mayor on the
Laquan McDonald case. The activism
is all from outside."
T bell tower of
St. Sabina can be seen for a dozen
blocks in any direction. As Pfleger walked
through the sanctuary one morning, on
his way to a meeting, he gestured to-
ward the splendor above, and winced.
"The stained glass was brought from
Paris in ---the middle of the De-
pression," he said. "People were stand-
ing in bread lines, and they're bringing
in marble." Most days, Pfleger can be
found in the rectory, in a cramped o ce
with faux-wood walls that are the color
of peanut butter. Across from his desk,
a grainy computer screen displays twelve
security cameras from around the church
complex. Every once in a while, he shouts
"Justice!," which is the name of his cocker
spaniel, who's in frequent need of guid-
ance. The walls of Pfleger's o ce are
covered with photographs of friends and
visitors: Coretta Scott King, Desmond
Tutu, Johnnie Cochran, Mr. T. There
are mementos: a signed photograph of
Muhammad Ali knocking out Sonny
Liston (the same image that Barack
" You forget, Oh, yeah, he really is a white guy," Jeremiah Wright said of Pfleger.